{"id":87326,"date":"2026-03-14T03:30:58","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T07:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=87326"},"modified":"2026-03-14T03:54:45","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T07:54:45","slug":"87326","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=87326","title":{"rendered":"The Middle East resembles today a black and white board where the pieces are moving faster and unpredictably:Sri Lanka has no pieces in the Middle Eastern theatre, yet its strategic position on the game board itself is increasingly hard to ignore."},"content":{"rendered":"

By<\/p>\n

Wijith De Chickera<\/strong><\/p>\n

<em>(The writer is Editor-at-large of LMD, and has a Post-graduate Diploma in Politics and Governance)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Crossroads such as The Silk Route have their own legends about countries, characters and caravans. But it is chessboards that may have some elements that are far more relevant to the state of play in the Middle Eastern game that is going on today.<\/p>\n

On a chessboard, every move looks deliberate, strategic and calculated \u2013 sometimes, even elegant. Pawns advance with a purpose that can terrify kings. Knights leap in elaborate corkscrews \u2013 often two at a time (ahem!) \u2013 to trap unwitting opponents. Queens stride across squares laterally and diagonally, with predatory confidence. <\/p>\n

But seasoned players know the truth: sometimes the most decisive move in the game is the one that no one saw coming, and yet it sets the whole board on fire.<\/p>\n

That, increasingly, is what the Middle East resembles today: not merely a red-stained battlefield, but a black and white board where the pieces are moving faster and more unpredictably than even the grandmasters expected.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Checkmate<\/strong><\/p>\n

The present conflagration between the US and Israel on one hand, and Iran on the other, began with what appeared to be a bold opening gambit. Israeli strikes reportedly dismantled missile launching sites, command centres and air defence bases across Iran, with clinical detachment and surgical precision. <\/p>\n

By most accounts, and even allowing for Western media bias in favour of international Jewry and Hebrew interests in the Levant, Israel has \u2013 and claims \u2013 effective control of the skies above the deserts of West Asia.<\/p>\n

In the calculus of warfare, that is the equivalent of placing the opponent\u2019s king in early check. If we remember that the term \u2018checkmate\u2019 probably derives from the Persian \u2018shah mat\u2019 (\u201cthe king is dead\u201d), it comes as little surprise that the Israeli-goaded, US-led strike on Tehran took out the Ayatollah as one of the first major moves in what now threatens to be a war of brutal retaliation.<\/p>\n

But for all the US-Israeli initiative and apparent upper hand at present, seasoned chess players know that early checks are sometimes deadly traps that become evident only when the confrontation progresses into mid game. <\/p>\n

Washington appears to have assumed \u2013 and gambled on the premise \u2013 that eliminating top-tier leadership in Tehran would cause the Iranian state to crumble… that decapitating the command structure at its uppermost echelons, in the religious files over and above the military ranks, would scatter the pieces across the rest of the chessboard. <\/p>\n

But Iran has played this game before, from the time it was the Persian empire perhaps. And the modern Islamic Republic has planned for precisely such contingencies long before this unnamed war. <\/p>\n

For Iran has developed centralised command structures but with layered leadership precisely to survive shocks of the nature that its attackers would have inflicted on it with a view to precipitate paralysis.<\/p>\n

In fact, the country\u2019s strategic religio-military culture was shaped during the traumatic years following the Iran-Iraq conflict, when Tehran learned to absorb blows that could have toppled less prepared regimes. <\/p>\n

Chokepoint<\/strong><\/p>\n

In counterintuitive chess terms, Iran has arranged its rank and file so that the ostensible demise of the king does not necessarily mean the end of the game. Shah mat. The king is dead. <\/p>\n

But play on, because it\u2019s not checkmate yet. And if the skies presently belong to Israel and the seas to the US\u2019s Middle East groups \u2013 bar British warships that Trump summarily dismissed as being redundant now that the war was \u2018won\u2019 \u2013 the board itself may still belong to Iran.<\/p>\n

The key square in the ongoing conflict is the chokepoint known as the Strait of Hormuz. Nearly a fifth of the world\u2019s oil flows through that maritime corridor. Closing it \u2013 even threatening to by laying mines across the waters (Iran was doing so a day ago) \u2013 would be the geopolitical equivalent of overturning the board. India, China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Russia and then Europe \u2013 in that order \u2013 depend on the billions of barrels that float through and beyond it.<\/p>\n

Such a move would not simply strike at Israel or the US but bring the rest of the world \u2013 kicking and screaming \u2013 into the game. The Great Game with a slight shift of locale, and the last twist of the knife being making Hormuz Iran\u2019s Suez.<\/p>\n

That tactic, perhaps, is the main point of the Persian game and the pivot of the present conflict. By threatening the main oil artery of the global economy, Tehran could compel reluctant players \u2013 from Western Europe to Far East Asia \u2013 to exert pressure on Washington and Tel Aviv. <\/p>\n

Any closure or severe constriction of the strategic strait could transform a sporadic middle-eastern war on the level of sharp, short-lived skirmishes into a protracted global economic emergency.<\/p>\n

A series of checks<\/strong><\/p>\n

Already, the markets \u2013 oil and financial \u2013 are twitching like spectators sensing a dangerous end game. Oil prices have surged beyond $ 114 per barrel amidst fears that tanker traffic could be seriously disrupted. <\/p>\n

Should the Strait of Hormuz become contested territory, crude could move towards $ 150 \u2013 an eventuality that could send inflationary and recessionary fears skyrocketing across continents.<\/p>\n

At that stage, the war would no longer resemble a duel between grandmasters. It would look like a multiplayer chess tournament gone spectacularly wrong.<\/p>\n

This is why claims of absolute Israeli air dominance must be treated with analytical caution. And interrogating the jingoistic aspirations of the US to be the Western Hemisphere\u2019s hegemonic superpower must be similarly interpreted with the hermeneutic of suspicion. <\/p>\n

While air superiority confers enormous military advantage \u2013 the ability to strike targets with relative impunity and whittle away at the enemy\u2019s infrastructure on the ground \u2013 tactical control of the skies does not automatically translate into strategic overall victory.<\/p>\n

For sometimes, wars \u2013 like quirkier chess matches \u2013 are won not in the traditional centres of the game, but along its edges: in logistics, economics and the spirit of socio-political endurance.<\/p>\n

And it is along those edges that smaller nation states \u2013 and little island republics \u2013 begin to feel the tremors as the after-shocks of the bombing and counter-retaliation ripple outwards.<\/p>\n

Place on the game board<\/strong><\/p>\n

Consider Sri Lanka. The island has no pieces in the Middle Eastern theatre, yet knights and rooks have ventured into its waters of late. And now, its strategic position on the game board itself is increasingly hard to ignore.<\/p>\n

The recent episode involving the Iranian naval vessel IRIS Dena demonstrated how distant wars can drift so easily into Sri Lanka, no mere backwater even before this outbreak. The rescue of survivors and the diplomatic choreography that followed were reminders that non-alignment is not simply a policy stance \u2013 it is a legal obligation governed by international conventions, maritime treaties, and most importantly the law of the sea as regards sovereign states that opt for a principled neutrality shot through with humanitarian compassion.<\/p>\n

The subsequent handling of the Iranian support vessel IRIS Bushehr further illustrated the treading of water Sri Lanka must do in a sea full of shark submarines. <\/p>\n

*Fact: Neutral states must assist sailors in distress while ensuring that their territory is not used by belligerents for military advantage. <\/p>\n

*Fact: At least one of the combatants is belligerent in private, applying not so subtle governmental pressure not to allow the other protagonist to court our favour by appeals to repatriate the sailors \u2013 contra the law of the sea at a time of war \u2013 while the other plays on our sense of humanity. <\/p>\n

The balance is not merely juridical; it is diplomatic and relational. And to extend our metaphor, Sri Lanka\u2019s moves are constrained by not merely geopolitics but international jurisprudence.<\/p>\n

And then there is the economic dimension of the game that is in progress. <\/p>\n

Sri Lanka imports nearly all of its petroleum. When global oil prices rise, the impact spreads across the local national economy like a cascade of forced moves, even enforced errors. If crude oil averages $ 110 this year, the country\u2019s fuel import bill could increase by an estimated $ 400-500 million. At a projected $ 130 per barrel, the additional burden may exceed $ 700 million. Should a nightmarish scenario eventuate \u2013 namely, disruption of the Strait of Hormuz pushing prices over $ 200 \u2013 the shock could skyrocket to a thumping billion dollars.<\/p>\n

For a nation still recovering from financial collapse tantamount to bankruptcy and struggling under an onerous fiscal reforms program, that is a series of checks our economy can scarcely afford. <\/p>\n

IOR ramifications<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet the implications extend beyond fuel invoices. Sri Lanka\u2019s maritime location places it firmly on the Indian Ocean chessboard, where several larger players are quietly repositioning \u2013 and evidently stealthily moving around \u2013 and deploying their pieces. <\/p>\n

One question increasingly being asked is whether India \u2013 traditionally, the first responder to geopolitical events in the eponymously named Indian Ocean Region (IOR) and where Mahabharat typically acted as top dog \u2013 is being overshadowed by its tiny neighbour as a prime mover in a maritime rescue role… a part that Hindustan may have found itself hamstrung to play as the rapid escalation of tension farther west forced it to take a stand on the side of one of its sponsors and allies.<\/p>\n

And China and Japan have their own stakes in the outcome. Beijing in particular relies heavily on Iranian oil imports and maintains strategic interests along the maritime routes linking the Persian Gulf to East Asia. Any disruption in those flows rattles the People\u2019s Republic\u2019s energy equations.<\/p>\n

Thus the chessboard on which Sri Lanka is placed extends well beyond the Levantine theatre and surrounding Fertile Crescent, stretching like a swathe of diagonal dark and light squares across the world\u2019s third largest ocean.<\/p>\n

Add to this the broader ripple effects: shipping insurance premiums rising, airlines re-routing flights around conflict zones, tourism flows dwindling, and remittances corridors affected by instability across Gulf economies where many Sri Lankans work…<\/p>\n

Each of these developments takes place across interstices of an already complexly connected board. <\/p>\n

Great Game on<\/strong><\/p>\n

Which reminds me to float a theory: what if the most strategic chess player in this game of fire and oil is not Iran but the US? And it is simply allowing Israel to be the tail that wags the dog \u2013 the Epstein twist in the tale included \u2013 because its strategic interest is not destroying Iran (as Israel\u2019s evidently is), but choking China and Russia? That would explain why Donald Trump had Delta Force violate Venezuela\u2019s sovereignty and arrest Maduro while Europe kept stumm: it\u2019s all the oil that would bolster Uncle Sam\u2019s Middle-Eastern misadventures.<\/p>\n

What, then, is Sri Lanka\u2019s most prudent position and moves on the game going ahead?<\/p>\n

On the global chessboard, Sri Lanka is not a knight or a bishop. But neither is it merely a pawn. To invoke an adapted analogy, it is more akin to a promoted piece \u2013 say, a castle \u2013 on a strategically placed square. One through which many of the world\u2019s most important sea, trade and shipping routes pass.<\/p>\n

That makes our ongoing neutrality not only desirable but essential and non-negotiable. <\/p>\n

Sri Lanka must, therefore, play its future moves cautiously, yet confidently, and be careful to assert and preserve its principled neutrality; respecting international maritime law, maintaining a fine and tense diplomatic balance, safeguarding its treasured sovereignty and insulating its fragile, recovering economy from external shocks.<\/p>\n

In chess, as in geopolitics, the most dangerous moments occur when players become too confident of their advantage, complacent about their assumed safety from attack. <\/p>\n

The game is on. What is our next best move? And how\u2019s checkmate avoided? <\/p>\n

Courtesy:Daily FT<\/em><\/p>\n

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By Wijith De Chickera (The writer is Editor-at-large of LMD, and has a Post-graduate Diploma in Politics and Governance) Crossroads such as The Silk Route have their own legends about countries, characters and caravans. But it is chessboards that may have some elements that are far more relevant to the state of play in the …<\/p>\n

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